Posts Tagged ‘training’

Spice Up Your Training Plan

Everyone knows that they should be exercising, yet most people dread the very idea. The sweating and strain aside, working out is just boring. Think about the people you see running or at the gym, they look bored of their skulls. If you are going to keep at any exercise routine, you will need to find some way to combat the mind-numbing madness that comes with it.

One of the biggest mistakes you can make when attempting to gain muscle is to imitate your favorite professional bodybuilder.

If you’ve seen the magazines: Flex, Iron Man, Muscular Development, etc…, you’ve seen the pro bodybuilding routines. These guys train one body part a day, 10 exercises for each muscle group, 6 sets per exercise, 12-20 reps per set, and they put together brutal 6 days per week workout routines, sometimes with 2-a-days.

What they don’t tell you, is that routines written by professional bodybuilders are not going to work for you if you are not either a pro bodybuilder yourself, or an unemployed, juiced up, genetic freak. If you follow these routines, you will overtrain faster than Arnold shows his bare ass in a Terminator movie. At least you will learn how NOT to train, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.

My Experience Training Like a Pro

I wish someone told me all these things before I started on some ridiculous pro routine when I was 16. This guy had me using ramps, training 6 days a week, once a day for two weeks then twice a day for four weeks, and focusing completely on machines, cables, and leg presses instead of squats.

What a complete waste of 6 months that was. When I finally confronted a personal trainer about my sore body and lack of progress, he ripped up my routine and set me straight. Thanks Ted!

Here are 10 reasons why you should not train like a professional bodybuilder:

Having great shoulders really makes you appear sleek and powerful. However, chest and back training does not suffice when attempting to build spectacular shoulders. You must train the shoulders directly, intensely, and often. Be attentive of these 6 common mistakes that people make when training shoulders.

Your chest is a large and complicated muscle. Considering its size you would think it would be easy to stimulate growth. Do some flat bench, another secondary movement, and your chest starts growing. Unfortunately the pecs are a much more muscle group area than that. In fact it is downright complex.

Training the pectoralis is a major puzzle to most bodybuilders, thinking a couple sets of bench press is all it takes, or going to the other extreme by dedicating a full day to 20 sets of different bench press variations. In this piece we would like to expose the answer to this puzzle by discussing the six most prevalent chest training errors and then providing tips to avoid them.

Read carefully; you will be surprised how many mistakes you are likely making.

The Personal Training Attitude

Becoming a personal trainer is something that only a select few are suited for. For one thing, it’s not enough to simply enjoy physical fitness yourself, although that is certainly a prerequisite if you want a career you love. You will need to exhibit specific strengths (pardon the pun) in order to excel in such a field.

You’ll definitely have to be committed to keeping yourself in shape; after all, who wants to listen to a personal trainer that isn’t fit? That’s like trusting a driving instructor that’s never been behind the wheel of a car. However, you also need to have the right disposition. If people want to be barked at and ordered around, they’ll join a boot camp class.

It’s the job of a personal trainer to motivate, not command. You need to be patient and nurturing and employ excellent communication skills. And above all, you have to be passionate about helping others become the best version of themselves. But you also need a fair amount of training under your own belt before you can train others if you don’t want to push them too far or cause undue physical harm. As a result, it may take you a little time to become a personal trainer.

There are two common comments that I hear from people that want to start on a fitness program. They can not afford to go to a gym. They do not know where to start.
Probably the best way to start involves no equipment and very little space. In other words, you can do it at home, in the park, whatever. Bodyweight exercises are just what they sound like; exercises that use your own body’s weight for resistance.

When used with no rest from one exercise to the next, not only can you get great resistance training, but fantastic cardio as well.

Below is an example of a workout that involves nothing but your own will and weight (and maybe a watch). If you are a beginner, do this one time through, three times a week.

For instance, Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
The next week, try doing it two times through on those days.
Then Four times per session.

Bench presses and curls are two of the first exercises that are learned by new weight lifters. For men, the chest or “pecs” (short for pectorals) are second only to biceps as the top show muscles in teenagers and young adults.

For women, the chest is even more important. Keeping well built pecs can be useful in maintaining a solid, perky appearance of the breasts.

Serious fitness enthusiasts and athletes know that the pecs are involved in one of the main powerlifting exercises, the bench press. The bench press is one of three exercises, including squats and deadlifts, in a standard big 3 powerlifting competition. For this reason, it is always important for powerlifters to increase their chest strength.

Therefore it seems to me that everyone has a reason to train their chest, including men, women, athletes, bodybuilders, powerlifters, strongmen… everyone; and here are the top 5 best chest exercises you should use.

You may have heard about the many benefits of adding weight training to your current workout routine, or perhaps you’ve done your homework and debunked some of myths that were holding you back. Either way, you are about to embark on a new mission – to get PUMPED UP! Or ripped. Or shredded.

In any case, you are probably keen to start trying out weight machines at your gym and pumping iron with free weights and barbells. But before you begin your sojourn into the wide world of weight training it’s not a bad idea to cover the basics so that you don’t end up injuring yourself or others.

Here are just a few common mistakes that you’ll definitely want to avoid:

Want massive forearms?

Aside from freaky traps, lumpy forearms are an excellent way to tell if someone is strong. Forget about pecs, biceps, even legs. If you are hella strong, you will most likely have thick, meaty traps and forearms. In order to get sick forearms, you have to use a variety of grip and forearm training.

Here is an interesting exercise called the Double Rope Climb. This is great training for both forearms and grip. Unfortunately it is Not easy to implement unless you have two strong ropes and something on which to anchor them. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t last long if I tried this.

This is another exercise that could be performed on back day, for conditioning drills, on “arm day” if you have an “arm day”, in a grip training routine, during circuit training, or integrated into a HIIT routine.